A broadband network provides a diverse set of data oriented services to customers (e.g. users). Such data oriented services may comprise, for example, voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) communications services, video services such as video-on-demand or broadcast television, Internet, and e-mail services. A variety of recording devices are typically deployed by a service provider in conjunction with the broadband network to capture customer usage and service events from the network. There are often multiple recording devices making recordings for a given event.
Moreover, mediation system platforms are typically utilized to gather all event recordings and process them through a set of business rules in order to select appropriate recordings as chargeable events to pass along to a rating system. The rating systems assigns charge plans to events and determines the specific charges to be billed to a customer. A variety of logical structures and algorithms are utilized to define charge plans. There can be multiple charges derived from a single usage event. Multiple events can be assimilated in order to determine an appropriate chargeable action. This can result in charge items being either individually itemized on a customer's bill or summarized to produce a single entry on a customer's bill.
Usage events morph as they pass through a sequence of life cycle stages starting as a collected and enriched event transitioning to a chargeable event item and ending up as a billed line item. Service providers generally utilize a system or collection of systems performing the collection & mediation/rating/billing operations identified above. Each of these operations creates a view of the usage event according to the operation being performed in this business flow.
In order to operate an entire business operation around the broadband network services, many supporting business processes are also required such as: a) identification of fraud, b) tracking and trending for supporting business analytics and revenue assurance, c) ensuring billing accuracy and error investigation and correction d) responding to customer inquiries and dispute resolution, e) supporting inquiries by law enforcement (CALEA). These processes often require a different analysis sequence of the usage events than what is required in order to render charges on a bill. The ability to support these processes often requires a precise correlation of event views across the various life cycle stages as well as an exact correlation of related events and related views of a single event within a single life cycle stage.